


The Enemy Will Arm Us

by ozarkhowler



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:54:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9945212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozarkhowler/pseuds/ozarkhowler
Summary: JUPITER:"[…] young RomulusWill take the leadership, build walls of Mars,And call by his own name his people Romans.For these I set no limits, world or time,But make the gift of empire without end." (1.371-375)No empire is born bloodlessly.Fic on the rise and fall of Carthage and Roman acquisition of Carthaginian territory.





	

_The only type of man who could bring down half the world is a man raised by beasts._

And so he had been, left on his own by Etrusca, nursed by the she-wolf and finally leader of a people that ultimately founded the city of the seven hills. His city was small at first and so was he. _Roma,_ they called it, naming it after him specifically.

~~

To his older sister’s people he was _Kar-Hadasht,_ the New City, even though he’d been around for much longer than most. To his sister, he was her baby brother Hannô Rodanis, and to her beloved twins Corsica and Sardinia, or Ahumm and Arishat, he was known simply as “uncle”. She and them had taken up residence in Utica so she could keep a better eye on both her and their territories. Ahumm sat next to him when they ate dinner, eyes glued to his uncle’s dark skin.

“What are on your arms?”

Hannô had looked at his small, awestruck nephew with a smile. “These are tattoos. When you’re a man, you’ll have them too.”

“And your face?”

“Scars. And a beard. You’ll have those as well, I imagine.”

Ahumm’s lip quivered and he looked more like his mother than anything Hannô had seen before.

A few days later, when she walked in to check on the two she found Hannô quietly running his large brown hands through his nephew Ahumm’s soft black hair.

“You’ll have one of your own eventually, you know,” she’d said gently, violet eyes dimmed with drowsiness.

“No. I will have to content with spoiling yours.”

Phoenicia only responded with a knowing smile.

~~

Hannô had woken up next to Helena only to look into her dark eyes and not see his face reflected in them.

“Do you love me?”

She pillowed her oval of a face on the whiteness of her forearm, lazily moving her leg to allow his other hand to move between her thighs.

“Let’s find out,” she murmured into his ear, his mouth finding the dip of her neck.

~~

He wasn’t ready when the time came for his first child to be born. Romulus was a young father. He knew just by looking at his son’s mother when he’d first met her that she was here before her time, long dark hair covered in a scarf and soft grey eyes downcast, too thoughtful to belong in the woods. She was gone a week after she had left childbed, leaving her son with him to raise and protect. He had her nose and those same wide eyes.

He named the boy Amlethus after seeing the little boy’s eyes shine dull grey. He began to grow and carry himself harshly; this would be one of those cursed just like his father and his father before him, those like Atlas with their weight all focused on their shoulders.

And Romulus bore it with a despotic tenderness reserved only for philosopher kings and wolves.

~~

Rome remembered the first time he saw Carthage very clearly; he sat on his boat like the crest of an ocean wave, deceptively reclined and leaning on a heavy, dark-skinned arm. His eyes were perhaps more gold than the bands of burnished metal wrapped around his tattooed arms.

 _Stay out of his way,_ the little voice in Rome’s head had hissed. Rome had never been good at listening to it.

~~

His sweat smelled like wine.

That was the first thing Hannô remembered recognizing about Romulus when Romulus tried to drive a knife into the small dip between his ribs. He looked maybe a bit over twenty, clean-shaven, pale-skinned, short-haired and nothing Hannô knew as familiar. _A new plaything._

“You will have to be faster than that,” Hannô had purred, casually flipping the young slip of a man over and breaking Romulus’s wrist in the process. Hannô loomed, the ritual scars on his face making Romulus wonder if he would look the same at Hannô’s age. A sandaled foot braced against Romulus’s chest and he wondered if Hannô would break his ribs as well.

“Your father and I were allies. I trust you will be as wise as he was.”

Romulus’s laugh was heavy in his chest as he looked into Hannô’s eyes.

“No such luck, _Poeni._ ”

~~

Phoenicia was known by her brother and those who had loved and would love her as _Ashtoreth._ The name was no coincidence.

When Ahumm grew old enough to ask her questions they came in thicker and faster than honey. It was enough of a job answering them as it was raising him and his twin.

“Who is my father?”

“Your father died before you were born. He gave you and your sister your towers.”

“ _Ame,_ is uncle my father?”

“Your uncle is not your father.”

“Does uncle only love me and Arishat because he has no children of his own?”

“Your uncle loves you because you’re his flesh and blood all the same.”

“ _Ame,_ is it true that he’s going to die?”

It was true; the rise of the clean-shaven northerners was one of great concern to both her and her brother. It was becoming less and less easy to beat them back. Thankfully, Hannô was no fool and had kept several tricks up his sleeve in case _Roma_ decided to get too close for comfort.

“We all die, Ahumm.”

“ _Ame,_ will I die?”

Every mother reaches a point where she has no way of answering a question and had to look her young one in the eyes and shrug feebly.

~~

Romulus would never forget running, retreating in his own city. Why the retreat? Because Hannô was riding a fucking elephant and that was the sort of thing no soldier is trained to combat.

“Where’s your luck now, Rome?”

 _Soon,_ he thought, clutching his son to his chest to keep the boy from breathing in too much dust. _Soon you will pay for this._

~~

Hannô found the baby while docking his ship, rocking in a basket on the waves. He’d heard the cries mixed into the roar of the dying storm and had jumped out of the boat to rescue it. He pulled the babe to his chest and swam them both to shore.

“Whose child is this?”

The child opened its eyes and he saw the same fierce gold color as his own. He clutched the child tightly before asking Mago to please consult the oracle over in Delphi.

The party was dispatched swiftly and returned to tell Hannô that the child, a girl, was his and Helena’s. This, it would soon be discovered, was the city-state of _Zis_.

His firstborn, and Romulus at this point already had several sons.

Phoenicia sidled up to rest her chin on her brother’s shoulder.

“You have a daughter.”

“…yes. Yes, I do.”

“Daughters need names.”

He took in a shaky breath and she rubbed his back.

“Not Elissa.”

“No, of course not; it would be foolish to do so. I will name her Eshmouniaton.”

_Eshmoun has given. He has given her to me. I will not give her up so easily._

~~

“Hannô has an heir.”

“One other than his nephew?”

“He has a baby girl.”

Rome snorted.

“So when he dies, she will marry and the bloodline will end with her. I’m not too concerned.”

“If you say so.”

Romulus looked at the senator conspiratorially.

“But I do think we should get him out of Sicily; he’s a little too close to Helena’s investments for comfort.”

~~

Zis grew to be a strong and independent young girl with thick dark hair just like her father’s that her aunt would twist into small braids and bedeck with gold. From some angles the braids looked like snakes jumping off her scalp; the Greeks on the other side of her island would use this for purposes that could only be described as unsavory. From the moment she could walk, her father had begun to teach her how to fight.

When Syracuse had made the grave mistake of tearing a young Zis from her father’s side at the battlefield and carrying her back to his palace, she had responded by cutting off his head with his own _mjannyut_ knife as to ensure his death before presenting it to her father when he inevitably arrived with a fleet of his best ships to retrieve her.

“Shouldn’t little girls refrain from this sort of thing?” a wealthy Carthaginian landowner had commented at one point after seeing her running outside and throwing a javelin a little too accurately.

“She is not like most other little girls,” Hannô had said matter-of-factly. She fell to the ground after throwing with too much of her weight and it made his joints start to ache.

She came to him one night in tears after he came home from the battlefront, covered in ash and with no spoils. _You cannot fight forever, old man._

“I thought you would not come back. Will you always come back?”

“Eshmouniaton, look at me.”

She tilted her face up to him while he held up a hand, cutting the palm open. As he cut, the wound seemed to sew shut instantaneously.

“I heal, and very fast. You are my daughter, and I imagine you will have this same gift when you inherit my lands. I will not die without you with me, my darling. I will always come back for you.”

Ahumm hollered something from the other side of the building and she looked up to her father with wide gold eyes.

“Go. Play. I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me.”

Eshmouniaton scurried away through the legs of both her aunt and her father’s mistress, getting tangled in their skirts before the two, laughingly, lifted their legs so she could pass.

“Hannô. This is a losing game. More people are going to die. You need to sign the treaty.”

“Surrender?”

“Yes.”

“Ashtoreth,” he breathed, looking his sister in the eye. “We can’t do that. We don’t know what he’ll take. The new island we just colonized? Corsica and Sardinia? Ashtoreth, he will sell them as slaves.”

“No, he won’t. He can’t.”

“I can’t just—“

“Yes, you can. If there is no way out, we need to make one. You will hail for peace.”

She left with a swish of myrrh and purple silk. He turned to the other woman, Fadila, and she kissed his ear and greying temple before telling him that she was with child. It would be his second time being a father and her second time being pregnant, the last time having been with the heir of Rome. Eshmouniaton would be an older sister.

~~

“What are your terms?”

“I want Corsica and Sardinia.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Rome smiled tightly. “I believe you’re the one who asked for my terms.”

Carthage had a wide, even face that showed no emotion other than a blankness, which in its lack of expression alone struck fear in the hearts of simpler men. Unfortunately, Rome was far from simple.

“You can have their land, but my sister keeps her children.”

Romulus snorted before looking Carthage over once again.

“Why do you want to keep fighting like this? It’s over. I’ve won. You know, you have a daughter. I have a son. If we unite our houses, it will be an end to the bloodshed—“

Hannô’s face broke into a wide, dangerous smile, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“So you want to take _my_ child as well as my sister’s?”

Romulus’s mouth shut before Hannô continued.

“You’re not laying a hand on Zis. She stays with me.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I want your hold on Sicily too.”

“I just told you you’re not taking my children or my sister’s children. Why don’t you respect my answer? Am I too forward?”

“No, not at all. It’s because I hate you and all you stand for.”

“Ah, yes, and that would make it such an _excellent_ idea to…how did you put it? _Unite our houses_. Do you really hate me? I think you’re too young to know what that feeling is. If you hate me then you hate your father too, and the woman you love, who bore me my heir—“

Rome reached to slap him and Carthage responded by stopping it with his own hand, grabbing the wrist he’d broken so many years ago.

“And hate is a lot like love. It’ll take you over whether you like it or not. What will you do when I’m gone?”

“I’m about to find out, now aren’t I?”

“Cut off a viper’s head and it will still bite you, boy. You can have my land but I am keeping my family together.”

~~

Both Ahumm and Arishat were now kept in the palace, away from the eyes of those who could tell a spy where, exactly, Carthage was keeping Corsica and Sardinia’s Nations. Eshmouniaton was open about her revolt and would not leave her father’s side.

Fadila went into labor as her lover tried and failed to keep the Numidians from robbing him blind. When he arrived home with his salted black hair matted with blood it was to the sound of her groaning.

“How is she doing?” was what he managed to get out when his sister pushed her way out of the room where Fadila was being contained.

“Not well, it’s been an hour and there hasn’t been much progress.”

“Does she want me to come in?”

Ashtoreth looked him up and down with a bemused smile before tying her long straight hair back once again.

“Not with you looking like that, she doesn’t.”

It took three more hours before Carthage’s second child came shrieking into the world, Fadila’s head finally falling back in relief.

“Go get Hannô!”

Ashtoreth began washing the child, seeing Fadila’s nose and eyes in the baby’s face even after only a handful of hours alive.

“Fadila has given him a son.”

Hannô, freshly washed and bandaged, kissed Fadila’s face and held the little boy in his arms.

“I will call you Batno’am. _Son of charm._ To others, you will be known as _Malitah_.”

~~

“Romulus, something needs to be further done about Carthage.”

Romulus took a deep drink from his glass of wine.

“You mean besides the fleets I’m sending out in the ocean to ensure our naval superiority, besides everything with the mercenaries, and—“

“The army is back. They’ve regained their strength.”

“Yes, he heals incredibly fast for one of our kind. That’ll change—“

“He’s had a son.”

Romulus choked on his wine.

“What?”

“There’s been a report that he’s had a second child. A boy. Romulus, he will recover and pass his lands down to him and we will have this question for the rest of our lives. We must go now, kill the baby, take everything while we still can. _Carthago delenda est._ ”

Romulus breathed in deeply through his nose.

“Put the request through the senate, Cato. If they approve, we will go to war again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Romulus finally left the room to find Helena, who was nursing their own child. Would Herakles have these problems when he became a man, or would he inherit none of the issues his father faced?

“What is it, Romulus?”

“Hannô has been borne a son.”

“So one little boy to your _phaininda_ team of sons? Adela gave you another little boy only a few months ago, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Felicianus.”

Herakles detached from his mother’s breast. No pair of mother and child had ever looked more alike than the two in front of him. He leaned in and kissed her, touching Herakles’s back while she pulled him up to burp him.

“They say you had Hannô’s daughter.”

“I was too young then to raise a child. I am happy to raise mine with you.” Her eyes shone like the sea and he felt something gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

“I want everything he has and more.”

“You have already accomplished that. Don’t you dare question my loyalty to you. I was a different person when I loved him. Go see your youngest and think of all that you have. He has your eyes.”

~~

The more he heard the words the more he believed them: _Carthago delenda est. Carthago delenda est. Carthago delenda est. Carthago delenda est. Carthago delenda est._

Will you move yourself inland, Carthage? No? Then be ready for war.

He had no way of knowing that Carthage had no plans and no energy to enter another war with him. He just knew he wanted him gone.

~~

It had been three years into the siege and they’d finally gotten a captive who could actually tell them things.

“If you tell me where he’s weakest, I will be merciful to your mistress’s children. They will be treated with dignity and they will all three live peacefully. You will go back to your husband and live in peace.”

Ashtoreth’s lady-in-waiting had her wrists bound in front of her and her pretty silk robe ripped and mussed. The khol she put on to ward off evil spirits had begun to smudge from sweat and tears.

“What exactly do you need to know?”

~~

The raiders came at night and Hannô awoke to the smell of something burning before feeling like his skin was being seared off. He fell to the floor from where he slept with a hiss.

“Hannimelqart, please get me my armor.”

~~

Eshmouniaton was rounding up the servants and getting them out of the city walls while her father went to deal with the Roman forces finally, oh God, _somehow_ breaking down the gates.

She rounded a corner into her aunt’s arms when she realized she was forgetting someone.

“Where is Batno’am? Is he still in the nursery?”

“Zis—“

“Auntie, I’ll be right back—“

“Zis, you come with me right now—“

“No!”

And just like that, she vaulted off into the fire once again.

Ahumm began to tug on his mother’s skirt, green eyes full of a question she’d already heard from him.

“No one will die tonight, my love. But we need to hurry.”

~~

“Fadila, you take Batno’am and run.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“You have to. Fadila, _please,_ if they find him they’ll kill him. Go.”

There was a tinge of the former empire in his tone:

_“NOW!”_

When Romulus finally breached the walls he swore he saw a familiar woman with desperate grey eyes running in the opposite direction, a baby in her arms. A trick of the light, he assumed; the smoke was making him remember things.

“Onward.”

~~

Zis had run through burning cities before but she had never run through one that was her own. When she arrived at the nursery it was empty, and maybe ten minutes away from becoming rubble.

Four soldiers apprehended her while she escaped the castle, one grabbing her by the hair, two grabbing her arms, and another wrapped thick meaty hands around her throat.

“Be careful with this one. She has _teeth_.”

~~

Romulus found Hannô unconscious, buried under rubble.

“Leave no two stones to stack on top of each other,” he hissed. “No way to rebuild. Take him outside the city, put him with his family.”

The story goes that Scipio Aemilianus wept at the fall of Carthage and treated the Carthaginians who survived with mercy.

This is a lie.

Zis sat with Corsica and Sardinia, shivering and battered in the enclosed cart. Ashtoreth’s face was blank as she stared at the flames engulfing her younger brother’s city. All four of them were in chains; if they hadn’t been, Ashtoreth would have gathered up all three in her arms.

Imagine their surprise when Hannô’s body was hurled into the cart with them, and imagine their joy when Hannô made a noise, indicating that he was alive. Ahumm and Eshmouniaton both did what they could to try and grab for him while Arishat hung back, staying close to her mother.

“ _Ame,_ what will happen to us?” she whispered, thick hair falling in her violet eyes.

Ashtoreth simply breathed an “I don’t know” as Ahumm ripped his tunic to wipe the blood off his uncle’s face.

~~

Fadila held Batno’am close to her chest, lying down in the boat as the red glow of her lover’s dying city grew smaller and smaller. Batno’am would not stop crying.

“Please be safe. We will wait for you.”

~~

“Corsica, Sardinia, and Zis have been recovered, Lord Consul, along with the representations of both Carthage and Phoenicia. Carthage will stand trial in front of the Senate tomorrow. His sister has been bathed and is being kept in private quarters.”

Lucius Mummius laughed and it sounded like paper.

“Strange. She is beautiful, but I did not take you for the type. What of the children?”

“They are being held in prison with Carthage until it is decided what is to be done with them.”

“Did we find the baby boy?”

“No. We believe the baby was crushed when the palace fell.”

“You mean to tell me that we’ve held siege to his city for three years to find his male heir and when we finally breached the walls we never found him?”

“…Yes.”

“Then for your sake I hope your beliefs prove to be correct, Romulus,” said Lucius with a thin smile. “It would be a shame to destroy the city only for it to rebuild in our absence under a new king.”

“Yes, Lord Consul.”

~~

Romulus made the trip down to the prison without any guard. He assumed he would not need it.

“Hannô.”

There was the sound of old bones and cloth moving against hard stone. Hannô’s hiss of a voice sounded like sand between teeth.

“What is it?”

“I want to ask a favor of you.”

It was too dark in the prison to make out how thick the grime was caked on Hannô’s skin.

“I am to be dragged through the streets tomorrow for a show trial in front of your Senate. What else could you possibly want from me? Is this not what you’ve wanted all along, _Roma_?”

“No. Where is your son?”

There was further _clank, clank_ noises as Hannô walked closer to the bars separating him and the Roman.

“I have no son. Only a daughter.”

“You’re lying.”

“Does it matter if I am?”

“Yes, it does.”

All Romulus could make out of the darkness of the cell was the angry, burning light in Carthage’s eyes.

“You will never find him.”

Romulus’s eyes flicked to Zis, sleeping in a pile along with her two cousins. Corsica was murmuring in his sleep. All Romulus could pick out was the Phoenician word for “mother”.

“She won’t tell you either. He is gone. Far away now.”

“Will I find him on that other island, _Malitah_?”

“You will never find him.”

“The Senate won’t rest until he’s dead.”

Hannô’s fist collided with the bars and it made a loud _bang,_ making Romulus jump back. Hannô laughed, a sound that came from deep in his chest.

“They won’t find him until he grows up and slits your throat ear to ear. Good day, Romulus. I will see you tomorrow.”

~~

Hannô Rodanis, nation of Carthage, was put on an open cart with his two “nephews” Ahumm and Ahirom Rodanis (Arishat, now Ahirom, seemed to have had the sense to begin to refer to himself as a boy in this situation), the nations of Corsica and Sardinia. Eshmouniaton Rodanis, nation of Zis and decapitator of Syracuse, was to be dragged behind a horse for her infractions against the Greeks.

All four were shorn like sheep; Eshmouniaton pinned down and shaved of her long thin braids while she felt her eyes burn with tears. Hannô seemed somehow smaller without the thick cloud of dark hair haloing his face.

These four made the journey through the city, shorn of their hair and fine clothes, for all of Rome to see. For all of Rome to try and grab, for all of Rome to point and stare at Hannô’s markings and for them to jeer, cause a scene, and throw things at.

~~

“Father, where are we going?”

“Amlethus, we’re going to the Senate. I told you before.”

“Why me?”

“You’re going to be my heir. You must know how these sorts of things work. And a man, a very bad man, is going to be on trial today.”

“Is this the man who kills the babies and eats them, who drinks wine and blood out of skulls for his gods and inhales vapors to see and talk to evil spirits?”

“Yes.”

“The man with the drawings on his body and scars on his face?”

“And the large beard, yes.”

Amlethus looked up at him with wide hazel eyes.

“Is it all true?”

“Yes, all of it,” Romulus lied. Amlethus got quiet, looking very much like his father in that moment.

“I’m happy he’s going to die.”

Romulus suddenly felt very cold.

~~

Hannô’s Latin was stilted. It was better than the Senate’s Punic.

“Senators, countrymen, Lord Consuls. I am the nation of Carthage, the man you have sought to destroy for so many years.”

“I think we’ve succeeded in that regard, don’t you?”

A ripple of laughter echoed through the Senate and Hannô had to keep himself from lunging, remembering the three children being detained behind him.

“It is true that I no longer have the power of healing that I possessed. I am slower, and weaker, and older. Which is why I have a wager for you all.”

The sound of roughly four hundred men leaning forward filled his ears. Lucius Mummius turned to look at Gnaeus Cornelius.

“A wager?”

“I fight Romulus in your Coliseum. If I lose, you execute me with a _mjannyut_ blade to ensure my death, you sell my family into bondage, you do what you will with my holdings.”

Lucius’s eyes narrowed.

“And if you win?”

“I and my family go to Utica; I live out the rest of my days and so do they. We will be loyal to the emperor.”

Hannô heard Ahumm, the brave little Corsican, let out and then bite back an angry shriek.

“You give me one knife, _mjannyut_ or no. Make it a fight to the death, if you see fit. Whichever drives your people to watch.”

Lucius turned to look at Gnaeus. Gnaeus shrugged and Lucius nodded. The land of Ba’al Hammon was without its teeth. It would be an easy fight.

“Sustained. In three days hence.”

Romulus, in the back of the room, felt a bead of sweat trail down his back.

~~

Ashtoreth sat with her face towards the ocean when Helena walked into her prison called a private room.

“It’s not so bad, now is it?”

“It is bad. My brother is going to die.”

“Phoenicia, we all die.”

She turned a violet eye to meet Helena’s dark ones.

“Fine. He’s going to die _faster._ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re _not._ You want him dead too. You hate him as well.”

“I loved him too, once. I bore him his daughter—“

“Again, you lie. The gods gave your daughter to him. You gave her to the sea in a basket to drown and the sea decided she was worth keeping alive. You said you supported him and then condemned him for supporting you, condemned him for practices you promote as well. You talk about him as the child-slayer when your men in Sparta do the same to their young. How _dare you_ —“

Helena remained silent. Ashtoreth took a deep breath and turned her hard gaze back to the sea.

“I need to go back to the ocean.”

“You can’t.”

“I will.”

“You have to stay. You’ll grow to like it here.”

The Phoenician woman turned to look Helena in the eyes once again.

“It will never happen.”

~~

The eve of his match they put him, and Ahumm in one cell and Ahirom and Eshmouniaton in another. Eshmouniaton, tiny Zis, was crying. Hannô contorted himself in his cell to reach through the bars and curve a large hand against her face before trying to sing a lullaby. His voice was low and off-key and when it cracked he made a playful, startled noise in his throat that made her crying turn to hiccups and then, finally, to laughter.

When a guard put a torch close to their cell, Ahumm squatted inches away from Hannô’s face to memorize his scars and tattoos, quietly taking dirt and brushing it along his nose, arms and torso to mimic the markings.

“And this one. What does it mean?”

“That I am a sailor, like my father before me.”

“And that?”

“That I am a priest as well. Will you be a sailor and a priest, Ahumm?”

Ahumm, whose name meant _brother of the sea,_ snorted before saying that of course he would be both.

“I will be like you when I am older, Uncle.”

“No, Corsica. Be better.”

~~

All four were hauled from their cells; Hannô to fight and the other three to watch. Ashtoreth was finally reunited with her children and her niece, gripping all three tightly and crowding them into her lap.

“He said if he loses, we’ll all be sold as slaves.”

“We’ll all stay together.”

~~

When Hannô advanced on Romulus he could barely hear the dull roaring of the crowd.

“Let’s end this quickly,” said Hannô, swinging his cheap sword over his head to meet with Romulus’s _gladius_ and making a dull _clang._ When Hannô moved it made Romulus realize that even with no fast healing and potentially no immortality, Hannô was still a man who had been fighting for longer than Romulus had been alive.

Romulus could not afford to attack but only to defend; he couldn’t look directly at Lucius and Gnaeus in the stands but he knew enough to know that they would be concerned with his performance.

Even if the blade the Carthaginian had been given was one that wouldn’t kill him, it would definitely not look good for Romulus to lose. Lucius whispered a command into the ears of three soldiers.

“Before you die, I have to know: was Helena Zis’s mother?”

“Yes!” cried Hannô with a smile, bearing down against Romulus. “You can see it in her temperament and her hands. She loves to read and can sail just like her.”

“And what about your son?”

“Ah, also a woman you know well from what she’s told me.”

“Another nation?”

Hanno nodded cheerfully before dealing a blow to Romulus’s wrist, causing him to drop his sword. Hannô grabbed it, realizing from the weight that it was a _mjannyut_ blade.

“Oh, _Romulus_ ,” he purred, sounding very much like he had sounded during his prime. Romulus felt himself grow weak at the knees as Hannô’s hair seemed to get less grey, his mouth and eyes less wrinkled. Before his eyes, Carthage had begun to heal again.

“You have been very foolish,” he continued, readying a killing blow. Romulus could not bring himself to move.

Hannô was too busy with Romulus to see the soldier sneaking up behind him. Hannô died with the word “goodbye” on his lips, head separated from his shoulders while preparing to tell Romulus how deep down, he’d admired him.

Romulus grabbed Hannô’s severed head by the thick black hair and lifted it for the crowd to see. Lucius and Gnaeus were cheering. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what was left of Hannô’s family being taken out of the Coliseum to the auctions. The Corsican and Zis were both screaming, tears rolling down their small faces.

Romulus felt ready to vomit.


End file.
